Will we ever see 16:9 pan & scan?

I was just sitting here at work thinking about my HT as I often do. :b And I was wondering.. with the imminent take-over of 16:9 sets... will the J6P's be requesting that 2.35:1 films be pan & scanned down to 16:9?

You're late to the party, Dave. HBO has been doing this with 2.35:1 films on their HD channel for years, despite loud protests from the HT community. They claim to have survey evidence demonstrating that the public wants this, but at the time they implemented the policy, almost no one had HD-capable hardware.

Is it only in North America that this is happening? It seems strange and disturbing to me that such a movie pioneering country should be so backwards when it comes to properly displaying movies in their correct aspect ratios while other countries are not.

They should put 2 versions of the movie on each disc (if they're going to do pan and scan at all)- one a proper aspect ratio presentation, the other pan-and-scanned for 16x9 version with the 4x3 pan and scan flag enabled to 'fill up' 4x3 screens. It sucks that I can't buy certain movies in widescreen, but I can get the Queen videos cropped for widescreen!

I been watching Fellowship of the Rings in Full frame 16x9 HD here in Canada, and I'll be honest. I don't like it.

It's like... one wall has been knocked down, and behind it, is another stupid wall. Will the general public just not be happy until those damn black bars are gone?

What's this going to come to? 2:35:1 TVs? But of course Hollywood will have to widen the current ratio to something like 3:67:1, and so there will still be bars when shown on the new 2:35 TVs... and before you know it...

huh..

Sorry. Got a little out of hand there. Suffice it to say, it's not getting any better as technology improves.

I own a "widescreen" VHS of the lost boys, which has an AR of about 1;85 (According to IMDB it should be 1;2.35). This was bought about 6-7 years ago when Widescreen TVs were booming. In fact there was quite a brouhaha on a primetime "customer issues" program Watchdog about Titanic still having black bars when shown on a widescreen TVs. But in the same programme they complained that it was about 3 minutes shorter and must be missing something (PAL speedup).

Knowing my luck, if there is such a thing as re-incarnation, I'd come back as me!

I saw that Watchdog too (oddly enough). The look of exasperation on the FOX UK exec as they were barracked for daring to release the 'widescreen' VHS in anything other than the shape of a 'widescreen' TV was just heartbreaking.

This is now happening a fair bit in the UK, with discs like "U-571" and "Gosford Park" being opened to 16x9 even though they are 2.35:1 films.